


Push

by tatooedlaura



Series: Backyard Swings [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: The X-Files Revival, X-Files OctoberFicFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 16:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: The evening ....





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to ““Backyard Swings” and “Hammocks”

Every so often, he’d touch his toe to the railing, sending them gently swinging once again, enough to retain the quiet bubble of unreality they’d been in the last four hours but not enough to rattle them, not enough to bring the world back instantly as they flailed around trying not to fall.

Push.

They spent years trying not to fall. It seems like that was all they ever did; did their best to stay one step ahead of the fall. Scully forged ahead with a reckless abandon that scared him witless sometimes. She never dwelled, never stopped to think about what was best for her. Sure, she thought about what was best for him, arguing in the early years, making him prove himself in the middle years, comforting him near the end of their time out in the open. She then ran with him, held him, settled with him, grew angry with him, grew frightened for him, ran once again because of him, started a new life without him but never leaving him.  
She never really left him.

Push.

He knew she thought herself selfish for abandoning him, as she referred to it once, during one harsh night of haphazard reunion, the quiet 2am confession spilling out before she ran again; back to her place, back to her life, back to a life, in theory, without him.

He had put her through so much and here she was, in his arms, sleeping peacefully on him, smooth skinned heaven against his bare chest.

He’d been trying to do what was right since she moved away. He’d never say abandoned or tossed aside or left behind or given up on or disappeared … he only thought of it as moving, moving out of his touch but not from his heart or his mind.

Push.

He’d been crushingly lonely when she moved away, the house settling into silence without anyone to hold a conversation with, without someone to yell downstairs for clean towels or upstairs for toilet paper. Hell, he was still lonely, waking every day in their shared bed huddled on one side, unconsciously leaving a space for her, the second pillow waiting for her much like he did, hovering in limbo.

Maggie had been his saving grace. She’d called him immediately after what he could only assume was the monumental conversation between mother and daughter about how she now had a new address and an old life frozen in her heart, waiting for the right moment to thaw and thrive again.

She’d talked to him, not at him, letting him pause for what felt like hours, trying to come up with a word in the English language that could describe the anguish of his universal existence crumbling to dust in the span of two words and one heartbeat.

"I’m leaving."

Push.

Maggie’d made him promise to come by on Tuesday to help her with the weed-whipping and to call on Friday. She’d asked about Thursday cards but he’d turned her down, declaring it was too soon and too late.

He’d gone to bed that night, instead of taking refuge in his couch in his study in the corner of the house where he’d see the evidence of everything he’d ever done wrong since the day she walked into his life. It had been a terrible night, the pain in his chest making it hard to breathe, the grip he had on the phone in his hand making his fingers numb, making him wish his heart would go numb as well.

He somehow managed to get what he could only estimate to be about an hour of sleep and once he finally dragged himself from under the mockingly happy quilts, he saw his life for the first time. He immediately curled in the living ]room, not able to climb back up to the bedroom to die in the comfort of their room.  
Push.

He didn’t see Maggie for two weeks. He hadn’t seen Scully for two weeks. He didn’t see anyone or anything for two weeks.

He’d remained in the living room, office door closed, bedroom vacant, kitchen cold, until, looking outside completely by accident, not wanting to see the world around him, the world he’d hoped him and Scully would make a life together in, he saw a cat sitting at the door. It was bright orange, mangy, couldn’t have weighed more than two pounds and was looking at him with such a look of contempt that he had to laugh.

Well, smile.

Think about smiling.

Sometime in the future.

Push.

That damn cat demanded so much attention from him that he called it Frohike Langly Byers or F.L.B. for short. It needed food so he had to go shopping. It needed a litter box so he had to remember to clean it. It needed shots so Mulder had to find a vet and take it there. It needed declawing so Mulder had to fret by its side both at the vet and back home, worrying its little feet would hurt if it had to walk anywhere. It needed a way to look out the window so he built it a shelf and fashioned a way to hook it below the sill. It needed cuddling constantly so Mulder held it, letting it burrow into his shirt and take refuge in the warmth of his neck on cold nights.

He spent another two days in bed when it finally occurred to him that he could do all that shit for a cat but he’d never done any of it for Scully. He’d never offered and she’d never demanded.

He showed Maggie pictures of F.L.B. or Flab as he was quickly nicknamed by her when she saw how fat he was getting. He also showed her, that first visit after the Apocalypse in his heart, the prescription Scully had written all those months ago that he never filled, screamed about, argued about then grew silent about.

Push.

He’d began his medication, began his sessions, began his long crawl out of the darkness.

He’d sunk back into devastation the first time he saw her again, at Maggie’s dinner table, two months later. They’d spoken on the phone before then, mostly inquiries on her part to make sure he was still alive and inquiries on his part that screamed silently ‘I’m not whole without you’ but out loud asked about work and her new apartment.

She had looked terrible and beautiful and heart-wrenchingly sad as she took a deep breath and asked how things were. He’d wanted to scream and break things because she didn’t come home with him that night and he had, F.L.B. hiding under the bed for the duration.

He’d had another relapse that demanded F.L.B. squeezing when a spare key to her apartment arrived in the mail with a note saying, ‘for emergencies.”

He still had that key on a ball chain around his neck, even now, the small piece of metal that anchored him to her settled next to her forehead.

Push.

The medication helped, the therapy helped, the de-cluttering of his mind and office helped, F.L.B. greeting him at the door every time he came through it helped, the time with Maggie helped.

He was holding on by these threads and couldn’t ask for much more than that. These threads were a gift from Scully even though she had no idea she’d given them to him.

She’d moved away and left what he needed behind.

She’d left her mother, her doctoring expertise, shelter and enough clothes with her scent on them that he could get his fix whenever he needed it. Hell, sometimes, he even wondered if she sent him that stupid cat with her fire-y coloring and penchant for judgement.

It had taken him years but he knew where he was now, what he was doing, where he wanted to be and who he still needed to be with.

Push.

They had lost Maggie along the way but in time, she’d show up again, in Scully’s laughter, in her brother’s stubbornness, in her nephew’s eyes and her niece’s shrewdness.

In time, they’d meld themselves back together, this time Mulder giving as much as Scully had, in their mother’s house, a house that had already known long marriage and true love and honest compromise and necessary truth. The gray house had been their first home but this would be their last one and if it took all he had in the world, he’d make sure she was happy here.

He would be the better version of himself she’d always seen but he’d never noticed until she left.

&&&&&&&&&&

It wasn’t the sun that woke them up but the incessant chirping of happy birds in happy trees under happy clouds in the happy breeze.

Okay, so he wasn’t the most chipper person in the morning but luckily neither was Scully, which is why he smiled when he heard her mumble against him, “go tell them to shut up, would you?”

“And risk being pecked to death? I might be an idiot at times but I’m definitely not that stupid.”

Taking a deep breath in, some of the morning air creeping into her nose but mostly the deliciously warm aroma of her Mulder filling her lungs, “we should go inside. Go back to sleep.”

“Or we should get in the car and go feed Fro. I gave her enough food for a few days but knowing her, she ate it all in five minutes and it now feigning death on the kitchen floor from starvation, making herself all flat so when I finally get home, I’ll see how wasted away she is, even thought she could easily survive a month on her fat reserves alone.”

“Fro?”

“She fluctuates between nicknames but lately she’s been Fro … the weather is doing something to her fur and when she runs under the chair, her hair gets all crazy, hence the nickname.”

With a smile, “we’ll go in a little while.” Remaining quiet against him for a few moments, she took to tracing a pattern around the key resting on his tan chest, “what were you thinking about last night? I woke up and could almost hear the wheels grinding.”

Loving that she could still pick up on everything, even when partially comatose, he kissed the top of her head, “just thinking about 23 years and how I’m hoping for 123 more.”


End file.
